WITH QUIVERING HANDS, I reached for the binder. I was a little uncertain about exactly what it might hold, but positive it couldn’t be a worse torture than having to watch the werewolf feast.

I lifted the cover and fought down the shock of seeing Evie staring back at me. Of course, I knew it wasn’t actually Evie, but the resemblance was uncanny. I’d seen the photo of Evie’s parents on the dresser in Evie’s bedroom, but I hadn’t really looked at it. I hadn’t seen what I could see in the photo before me. There wasn’t a single notable difference between Evie and her mother. They could have been identical twins. In a way, they almost were—their DNA markers would be as similar as identical twins.

Written on the top left hand corner inside of the folder was a series of notes which listed her name as Emily White, gave a date of birth and a date of death—Evie’s birthday. The official, government story noted in the file showed that Emily was left as a baby at a hospital in Kent in the United Kingdom, but there was no information about how her mother—Evie’s grandmother—had died. The Rain hadn’t been involved in Emily’s life until they discovered that she was something sinister during her university attendance, so no one had a record of the reason for her birth.

Ignoring the rest of the notes, I turned back to the photos. The first two were of Emily with a man whom I recognized as a much younger David. In those photos, Emily looked roughly Evie’s age, but the thing that struck me most about the photos was that they could easily have been from the same roll of film as the photo that had been destroyed in the fire at Evie’s house. Flipping them over, I found a third photo of Emily. It was a surveillance photo, and the features of her face were blurred from the level of zoom that had been required to find her in the crowd. My stomach twisted at the certainty that this was the first official Rain photo of her. In it, I was witnessing the beginning of the end of her life.

The next four photos weren’t of her, but of people I assumed were Rain operatives. All of the subjects were in hospital beds and each of them bore similar wounds. From superficial burns that twisted grotesquely along their arms and legs to huge patches of charred and missing flesh. My nausea peaked as I flipped to the next photo. In it, three bodies, burned and blackened beyond recognition, rested side by side in front of a burned-out house.

“That one’s my grandfather.” A familiar voice spoke behind me as a dark, masculine finger, tipped with a perfectly manicured nail, reached down and touched the middle corpse in the photo.

The unexpected presence caused me to leap and scatter the photographs. I spun around in the chair and saw that another Rain operative had taken over from the Assessor. This one I knew well. Ben, the one I’d help rescue from his depraved fae kidnapper just a few weeks earlier.

“Well, they’re right about one thing. You’re not yourself, Clay. I would never have been able to sneak up on you before.”

He stared at me with eyes that had seen too much, and I had to turn away.

“You’ve lost your touch.” His lip curled up into a snarl of disgust. “Or maybe you are just that lost. Seriously, look at yourself.”

I dropped my head and ran an eye over the foul state of my clothing. Blood and vomit coated me almost from head to toe. Raising my gaze again, I took in his pristine, crisp—no-doubt designer—suit, well-trimmed, curled brown hair, and perfectly shined shoes. I’d never felt like more of a mess. Even searching through the dumpster for evidence hadn’t left me feeling nearly this grotesque.

“What are you doing here, Ben?” He was the last person I wanted to see. I considered him to be a friend, but after the events of a few weeks earlier, he would be even more prejudiced than ever before. I had to get him off my back and out of the room. Even when the tables had been turned and I was helping him out, he hadn’t been such a disaster. True, he’d fainted, but his life had just been spared by a fifty-fifty guess. “Shouldn’t you be off somewhere recovering from your own mess?”

“Lou has been incredibly helpful with that.” He brushed his fingers over the shoulders of his suit jacket, wiping off an imaginary piece of lint before leaning against the metal desk. “Besides, Dad asked me to drop in to see you. He’s worried about you. Is it really true?”

I hung my head in resignation. It was becoming clear that news of my disgrace had spread around the ranks of the Rain like wildfire. “Yeah.”

“What was she like? You know . . .” He winked at me.

If I had been armed and not being watched with such scrutiny, I would have had him against the wall with a knife to his throat for daring to ask me about her like that. It was none of his goddamn business; it wasn’t anyone’s business. Instead, I closed my eyes and relived the feeling of brushing my fingertips across the outside of Evie’s panties, the feeling of her body pressed against mine, the delight I felt the first time I caressed her breasts with my palms. I sighed heavily, the memories had calmed me, but I felt defeated over not being able to do any of it again. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You mean you ran away, betrayed everything you know and believe for a piece of monster tail, and didn’t even get any?” He laughed long and loud as if he’d just heard the funniest joke ever.

“Fuck you!” Once again, I found myself wishing I wasn’t being watched so that I could teach him a lesson.

“No, fuck you, man.” His face fell straight into a serious expression again. “My grandfather died trying to wipe that scum from the earth, something which you’re supposed to want to do as well, but instead you try to get in its pants. That’s like me embracing that fae fucker as my twin!”

The twin thing struck home, and I guilt twisted my stomach again. “I didn’t know about your grandfather. And I can’t help what happened. It’s not like I woke up one morning with a new fetish or anything. Evie’s just . . . well, she’s not like any of the other monsters we’ve hunted.”

“You seriously don’t get it do you? It’s not a matter of whether it was my family or not, or whether you think the creature might have a conscience or not. Phoenixes are killers just as surely as any other beast we hunt. They don’t discriminate who or what they kill. In some ways the fairer things are so much worse than the base creatures. At least a wendigo only kills for one reason, one primal need: hunger. These other things, they do it for fun. For enjoyment. You’re probably lucky you didn’t get any. No doubt that thing would have turned you into a Clay-kebab the instant it’d had its fun.” A shadow passed over his features, and I wondered if it was some barely repressed memory of his time in the clutches of the fae.

Despite the truth in his words, I couldn’t believe it about Evie. She wasn’t evil. She couldn’t be.

“You know we’re all here because we don’t want you going down that path again. The tail you were chasing is dead, and that’s a good thing.” He placed his hand on my shoulder in a sign of solemnity and solidarity.

I wanted to shake it off and refuse his words, but I couldn’t without warning the Rain of Evie’s continued existence.

“It removes the temptation and the risk. She won’t be able to come after your family and endanger your loved ones. Your father will never have to identify you from dental records because your remains are too charred to recognize. They’ll never have to search for you for days on end, not knowing where you are or whether you’re safe.” His own guilt over what his father had been through was evident. I wondered whether the doppelganger incident was the beginning of a new era for him.

“I guess,” I relented, trying to give him something, while still making every effort to hold in my heart the certainty that Evie wouldn’t hurt anyone. She wouldn’t come after my family, and if she knew what was good for her, she’d avoid trying to find me too.

“Just think about what I said. I don’t want to lose another friend, a brother,” he said the word as if it was intended to inflict extra guilt, “to one of these creatures.” Ben left the room shortly after, leaving me alone to consider the folder full of photos and notes once more.

I read through the report on Emily’s death, which listed the details for the team of eight operatives who were tasked with her destruction. Also attached to the file was a red flag for a recently graduated linguistics and mythology expert, a Miss Zarita Demitriou. The section for her information was mysteriously empty.

The actual details of the attack on Emily were sketchy at best, but it listed a case number—eight-digit date, two letters for the country, another two for the region and lastly three digits for the case. It was a cataloguing system I was used to, having looked up cases quite often in the past and cataloging a few myself.

Not every case was documented, but anytime something unusual occurred or a particularly difficult creature was encountered, the Assessors were informed so that it could be added into the Rain database. Looking at the case number for Evie’s mother’s death, and seeing how the Rain were able to reduce a life down to a serial number made me understand how truly barbaric the practice was. Because the fatal attack was the day of Evie’s birthday, the number was almost burned into my brain already.

The longer I looked at the file and information, the more the photos seemed to mock me. David and Emily had shared the sort of life I wanted to have with Evie, and it had ended in fire and death. Evie was just lucky her father hadn’t been killed during the attack as well, otherwise who could guess what might’ve happened to her. If she’d been captured as a child and brought to any of the Rain headquarters, her life would have been markedly different—and filled with pain beyond imagining.

Eventually, I couldn’t look at the folder without feeling sick to the stomach. I threw it across the table and tried to clean myself up as much as possible, tearing my shirt off to wipe myself down before leaning forward onto the table—the lack of food and sleep was starting to wear on me, especially as my adrenaline stores had long been sapped away.

The rest of the day continued in the same vein: visits by various friends and Assessors, photos and videos of attacks that we’d managed to stop, and the detritus of some that we hadn’t.

By the time I was thrown back into the holding cell and hosed down to clean me off, I’d seen more bloodshed and death than I could recall ever seeing at one time.

It made me question Evie’s nature; it made me doubt myself. I was so hungry, thirsty, and so completely exhausted that I barely knew up from down, and I would have agreed to almost anything for a bite of a cheeseburger or something, even though it probably would have been impossible to keep it down.

A small glass of water was pushed under the door, and I leaped onto it, drinking it down without thinking through the consequences. It tasted bitter and strange on my tongue. Almost immediately, my head spun and my brain became cotton wool. The sensation was so like the feeling I’d had after Dad stuck me with the needle in my makeshift home.

I pushed away from the door, heading toward the bed. Halfway, my knees buckled and I retreated to the nearest wall. My eyes drifted closed as my hold on reality—on consciousness—grew tenuous.

“What are you doing?” Evie’s voice flooded the space around me.

I opened my eyes, gazing across the cell toward the sound.

“Are you giving up?” My perfect, dream version of Evie sat on the small bed. One talon-like fingernail tapped against her chin as she looked at me. “You know what happens to me if you do that, don’t you?”

Even though I did know, I shook my head, rocking the back of my head against the rough brick behind me. The thickness in my head grew worse, and I could barely keep my eyes open without nausea rolling through me. I relaxed my back against the wall and stared down at the floor—willing it to stop moving so I could make it to the cot in the corner.

“If you’re not careful, they’ll find out the truth. They’ll know that you left me alive.” She purred the last word.

My fingers formed into fists at my side.

Evie’s face filled the space I had been staring into as she placed her hands against my chest. “They’ll kill me if they know.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t let them do that. I opened my mouth to reassure her, but it was dry and filled with cotton.

She leaned over to kiss me, moving to wrap her arms around my neck in the process. I pushed myself off the wall to meet her halfway. Instead of warmth though, I was surrounded by bitter cold. Instead of a sweet kiss, a hard surface smacked against my cheek.

“Keep me safe.” Her voice trailed off in a ghostly whisper as my hold on consciousness went from tenuous to non-existent.

 

ATER THE drugs that had been slipped into my drink left my system, I had a night of tossing and turning; with my mind and heart each locked in a battle for control.

I woke to a light knocking on the door. I didn’t bother telling whomever it was that they could come in, it wasn’t as if I had any control over that decision anyway. The door opened and Lou entered, carrying a tray of the most delicious smelling pancakes in the world. Of course, they were the first food I’d seen in almost thirty-six hours so it could have been a bowl of dog biscuits and it probably would have looked and smelled appealing.

“I made these for you,” she murmured, biting the inside of her lip. “Dad said I could bring them in so long as I tried to talk some sense into you when I did, and got you to drink this.”

I was too busy reaching for the food to even listen to her. Pouring on a generous serving of syrup, I picked one of them up and all but swallowed it whole. I grabbed the drink off the tray and gulped it down. I made a face as the foul liquid crossed my tongue. It was a flavor I was long used to but still despised—a multivitamin concoction of the Rain’s design. Operatives used it in the field to keep up their strength. It worked wonders, but it tasted like piss. I’d grabbed for my third pancake to wipe away the taste when Lou spoke again.

“Why’d you do it?” she asked, rubbing her hand along the scars on the opposite forearm.

I stopped chewing for a moment and really looked at her. It was the rare moments like this, when her bitchy façade was completely stripped away, that I remembered she actually wasn’t that bad of a sister most of the time. Especially considering everything she’d been through. When she let her real personality shine through, including the vulnerability it held, she was remarkably likable.

“Do you hate us that much?” Tears brimmed in her eyes.

“What?” I was shocked and dismayed by the suggestion. I’d never considered that my family would interpret my actions as hatred for them. “No! I don’t hate any of you. You know what Dad always says about family. I still believe that.”

“Then explain to me why you were willing to risk not only your own life, but all of ours, for her?”

I tipped my head back and rested it against the cold brick. The food I’d eaten sat heavily in my stomach and I wondered whether it was that great of an idea to have eaten anything at all. Shoveling it down so fast certainly hadn’t been.

“I can’t say.”

She frowned. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t say won’t. I can’t explain it, because I just don’t know why. All I know is that once I knew where she was, I had to be with her. For that week that I was with her, I felt more alive than I ever have before.” There was no point lying to Lou about finding Evie. After Dad and Eth had discovered her in the warehouse, there was no denying she had still been in Charlotte.

Lou scoffed at me. “That’s ironic considering it would have led to your death if we hadn’t arrived.”

“You can’t know that.”

She moved to sit beside me, lifting her arm up and reminding me of the suffering she’d endured. “I can. Ben can.”

“But that was the fae, not a phoenix.”

“They’re the same thing, and if you believe otherwise, you’re just fooling yourself. They’re not human, and they don’t share the same respect for life and liberty that we do.”

She might have been right about the fae, but ultimately she was wrong about one key aspect. The Rain didn’t care about the life and liberty of anything that fell outside of the scope of their limited definition of human.

Had anyone in the Rain even stopped to consider Evie’s rights? From what I’d seen in the file, even the deaths that her mother had caused had been the result of an assassination attempt on her. She’d been defending herself, and possibly her husband, and not going after humans out of some desire to hurt or kill. Would she have ever taken a life if left to live until old age?

I needed to know more—needed to read the full account of her life and death—but I couldn’t do that until I was freed from the prison. If anyone asked, I could claim that it was nothing more than research to help me learn how to fight another phoenix if I ever came across one again. Not that I would; I couldn’t be that lucky.

“We just want you back,” Lou said, shifting on the bed to sit cross-legged to face me. “And not the grumpy ass you’ve been over the last few years, I miss the brother I had before we went to Ohio.”

It was her words that forced me to realize that I’d been selfish in chasing Evie for so long. After all, what had I got from finding her? I’d destroyed Evie’s life, shattered my reputation, and ripped my family apart. All for what? A big fat nothing. A few precious memories of stolen moments that would do little more than torment me through the dark nights to come.

“I am back. Where else would I go? Evie’s . . . well, she’s gone, isn’t she?” I meant it differently to the way Lou was bound to interpret it, but it was the truth regardless. The motel room would have had to be vacated already, unless she’d paid for more time, but I doubted Evie would do that. She was a fighter, a survivor. She had the strength she needed to get up and keep moving. Away from the Rain. Away from me.

My features crumbled at the thought of the distance that was increasing between us as I sat trapped in the Rain headquarters.

“Dad’s going to be here for you again soon.” Lou sighed. “Can you just try to see things from our perspective for once?”

I nodded. “I’ll try.”